Family, 6 Disabled Men Left Homeless as Fire Guts House

Susan Bunker tearfully sifted through the soot, looking for her tiny daughter’s stuffed animals. Family and friends also tried to salvage a few things from the blackened house that only hours earlier had been home to Bunker’s family and six developmentally disabled men.

“This is some Mother’s Day,” said Bunker’s sister, Michelle La Bar, who had escaped from the blazing house only after dragging a 42-year-old resident--who didn’t know that the fire was dangerous--out by a belt loop on his pants.

“I thought I was dead. One of the boys wouldn’t leave . . . He didn’t know enough to be afraid,” La Bar said. While she was struggling to get the man out, she couldn’t even think about making sure her own 7-year-old daughter had escaped safely, she said. The girl, Stacy, was helped out by one of the other residents, she found out later.

Fire swept through the single-story board-and-care home in the 900 block of East Glendale Avenue in Orange shortly after 8:20 a.m. Sunday, caused by faulty electrical wiring in the wall of the garage, which had been converted to a family room, according to Orange Fire Department Capt. Bernie Brandriff. About 75% of the house burned, and the remainder was ruined by smoke damage, he said.

Two of the six developmentally disabled residents were away from the home, visiting families for the Mother’s Day weekend, and none of the remaining four was injured.

The residents were taken to other board-and-care homes shortly after the fire was extinguished.

Bunker and her husband, Jason, are houseparents at the home operated by Robinson’s Residential Care. But it was their weekend off and the couple, along with their 18-month-old daughter, Jamie, were visiting their family in El Monte when the fire broke out.

La Bar, along with her daughter, was staying at the house for the weekend as a relief houseparent. She was awakened by two residents who were watching television when they saw the flames. When she saw blue flames leaping out of the wall, “it was just a spot of fire . . . I thought I might even be able to put it out.” She was on the telephone to the Fire Department “when it (the fire) fell on the couch, and whoosh!” she said.

“It was unbelievable, even to see it, how fast it spread,” said La Bar, 26, who lives in Irvine. She is a registered nurse, “trained to be ready for emergencies, but nothing ever prepared me for this,” she said.

She said she tried to usher all four residents out, but one, a man with Down’s syndrome, did not want to leave.

“He couldn’t comprehend that there was something dangerous,” La Bar said. He froze, despite the fact that the house was filling with smoke, she said. She finally had to drag him out by his pants, down a few steps in the split-level home, and out to fresh air.

“I thought I wouldn’t be able to get out,” La Bar said, sitting on front lawn later Sunday. “I thought it was going to get both of us killed.”

Cried a Little

The four residents who escaped “were OK. They were pretty shook up, but they’re fine,” said Bunker, who arrived while firefighters were still on the scene. Two of the men are “higher functioning” and two are “lower functioning” but all understood they lost their home and possessions, she said.

“They all sat on the curb and cried a little,” said La Bar.

Bunker said the six residents, ranging in age from 18 to 42 years, have been placed in the other two homes operated by Paul and Marie Robinson, owners of Robinson’s Residential Care. If there are not enough vacancies at the other homes, she said, they will be placed in other board-and-care homes by the Regional Center of Orange County, which oversees the care of developmentally disabled people.

The East Glendale Avenue board-and-care home has been operating for about 14 years, said Bunker, who has been a houseparent there for 1 1/2 years.

Despite losing all of her possessions, Bunker said, she was grateful her family was not at home when the fire broke out. Her daughter still has lung disease from her premature birth, and she probably would not have been able to survive the smoke inhalation, she said.

Lost Everything

She lost everything, she said, except for the clothes she had packed for her weekend away.

Orange Fire Department’s Brandriff said damage to the structure was estimated at $80,000 and the contents’ loss was about $12,000.

Bunker said she could not guess the value of the burned and melted contents but expected it to be high. Each resident had his own television, videocassette recorder and stereo system, she said, so the loss was probably “double the value” of the normal contents of a house.

La Bar and the residents fled from the burning house dressed only in their nightclothes, and neighbors quickly came to their aid, feeding the men breakfast and helping Bunker and her family salvage belongings after the fire was extinguished.